The transgender movement is one of the hammers the tyrannical elite is employing to condition us to keep silent in the face of outrageous assaults on our thoughts, speech, bodily integrity, and physical safety.

The transgender war on cultural norms is not just about restrooms and pronouns. It’s about denying biological fact and quotidian reality. It’s about an epidemic of irrationality, a cultural contagion, a mass delusion that is claiming more victims every day. It’s about silencing free thinkers who refuse to bow to the radical “gender” ideology.

How do those of us still grounded in reality fight this insanity? Not with misguided “compassion” or compromise, but with straight talk and tough love. Let’s not waste our time analyzing or answering absurd gender theories with logical rebuttals. Those ideas don’t deserve that respect. And the useful idiots who swallow the trans lies – whether as promoters, allies, or victims – will not listen to reason or science.

Oppose trans activism

Refuse to go along with trans madness that declares:

“Sex is assigned at birth” by doctors.

Gender identity is inborn.

A three-year-old can know he’s “trapped in the wrong body.”

Some girls have penises; some boys have vaginas.

Blocking puberty in pre-adolescent trans children is sound medical practice.

A man can gestate and birth a baby.

Gender stereotypes are bad (unless you adopt one as your “authentic” trans identity).

Emphasize that people who identify as transgender need psychological counseling to escape their delusion.

Show true compassion by encouraging trans-identifying persons to accept their natural bodies. Help them avoid a lifetime of medical interventions (cross-sex hormones, surgeries, cosmetic procedures, counseling), infertility, stress-inducing efforts to “pass” as the opposite sex, suicidal thinking and attempts.

Explain there is no such thing as a transgender child. There are children who are confused, emotionally neglected, even possibly abused. Parents who affirm trans identities in children are themselves confused or needy, vulnerable to social pressures, or willfully misguided by health care professionals.

Speak out against the ghoulish medical procedures being inflicted on children, including puberty blockers. To prevent puberty in a healthy young body is medical malpractice. Halting the development of a child’s sexual organs, then adding cross-sex hormones, will guarantee sterility. That is a violation of a child’s human rights. “Gender” clinics for children should be shut down.

Oppose laws or policies granting special rights to trans-identifying persons. They already have all the rights they need as biological males and females. Non-discrimination policies protecting ill-defined “gender identity” are superfluous.

Demand that single-sex public restrooms and locker rooms allow only biological males or biological females. Attempts at compromise (e.g., single-stall restrooms for trans-identifying persons) effectively concede that trans identities are legitimate. And in any case, such compromise measures will be opposed as “discriminatory.”

What’s happening in the schools is especially important. Gender-identity non-discrimination laws or policies applied to schools are intended to disrupt and radically transform all of society, not just support “trans children” in school. If children attend a school where boys can be girls and vice-versa, many of these future adults will have been effectively brainwashed.

The Obama administration attempted to force public schools to enforce “gender” ideology across the board (not just in restrooms and locker rooms; see here and here). The Trump administration backed off from enforcing those regulations. But while the tables may be turning at the federal level, this is not true in many locales.

The Obama administration threatened schools with loss of federal funds if they didn’t implement radical trans-affirming policies. But now ADF warns: “Granting students access to opposite-sex changing areas could subject schools to tort liability for violating students’ and parents’ rights.” This could mean legal challenges even in states with laws mandating transgender-affirming school policies.

(Let the ACLU bring its “discrimination” lawsuits against schools which refuse to kowtow to transgender demands! With more conservatives being appointed to our federal courts, there is some hope we can bring an end to supporting trans-identifying children who upend the entire school environment.)

After all, rightly understood, a child’s trans identification is a family issue. Parents should deal with their child’s mental health problem privately, outside of school. It is unfair to drag the whole community into a family’s distress. Communities need more outside support for that common-sense approach.

Speak out!

Don’t try to convince brainwashed trans allies to reject trans insanity. But do embolden people who know in their hearts and minds that trans ideology is utterly false and destructive. They will resist if they see others doing so.

What’s really at stake is thought control. Government and institutions are forcing people to deny reality and accept a destructive, nonsensical ideology – accustoming us to obey the most idiotic directives. If people can accept as fact that “some boys have vaginas and some girls have penises,” they’ll roll over for anything.

The Brazilian publishing house Vide Editorial has just released a Portuguese translation of The Fool and Its Enemy by Jeffrey Nyquist, President of the Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political Science. The book is a masterful analysis of the crisis of the Western liberal democracies and its refusal to defend itself against its enemies (since those societies also refuse to recognize they have enemies).

https://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/O-Tolo-e-Seu-Inimigo-Jeffrey-Nyquist-329x500-570x760.jpg760570Inter-Americanhttps://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lg1.pngInter-American2017-10-11 01:03:312017-10-11 01:04:12Jeffrey Nyquist's New Book Published in Brazil

Brazilian media has been wrongfully reporting that the Inter-American Institute is organizing event with Congressman Bolsonaro in NYC

On August 25, 2017, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo published an article reporting a trip of Brazilian Congressman Jair Bolsonaro to the United States and claiming that the congressman had been invited to participate in a panel discussion by philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, fellow of the Inter-American Institute.

Last week, on October 3, a letter written by the current president of the Inter-American Institute, Jeffrey Nyquist, was sent to Folha de Sao Paulo, clarifying that the Inter-American Institute is not in any way involved in the sponsoring or the organization of the event in NYC, and requesting that the clarification note be published by that newspaper in order to correctly inform the Brazilian public about the fact that the Institute is not responsible for the organization of the panel discussion.

Folha de Sao Paulo, however, has not yet published the clarification letter sent 7 days ago and continues to claim that the Inter-American Institute is sponsoring and organizing the event with Congressman Jair Bolsonaro.

Therefore, the Inter-American Institute has decided to publish the letter sent to that Brazilian newspaper so that its readership might be correctly informed about the matter.

Movie tells the story of homonymous book by Brazilian philosopher and fellow of IAI

On March 23, 2017, the documentary movie “The Garden of Afflictions” will be screened at the Virginia Commonwealth University at 7 PM, in the building of the Academic Learning Commons, at 1000 Floyd Avenue, Richmond, VA. The documentary is about the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho and his book “The Garden of Afflictions,” after which the movie was named. Olavo de Carvalho is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy (IAI), Government, and Social Thought, and the most important Brazilian philosopher in action nowadays. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the film director Josias Teófilo and Mr. Olavo de Carvalho himself.

https://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/garden.jpg960680Inter-Americanhttps://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lg1.pngInter-American2017-03-23 14:45:102017-03-23 14:55:33Documentary Movie About Philosopher Olavo de Carvalho to be Screened at VCU

Women have always been exploited by men. That is a truth that nobody doubts. From the solemn lecture halls in Oxford to popular TV shows, from Collège de France to pop music groups, the world reaffirms that certainty, maybe the most unquestionable truth that has ever crossed the human mind—that is, if it ever actually crossed it, for it might have come straight out of wombs into academic books.

Not desiring to go against such an august unanimity, I here intend to list a few facts that may reinforce, in the hearts of believers of all existing and yet-to-be-invented sexes, their hatred against heterosexual adult males, those execrable creatures that no one who was unlucky enough to be born as a male wants to be when he grows up.

Our narrative begins at the dawn of time, at some imprecise moment between the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons. It was in those dark ages that the exploitation of women started. Living in caves, the human communities were constantly ravaged by the attacks of wild beasts. Males, taking advantage of their prerogatives as members of the ruling class, hurried to secure for themselves the safest and most comfortable of places of the social order: they remained inside the caves—what rascals!—preparing food for their babies, while the poor females, armed only with clubs, went outside to fight lions and bears.

When the hunting and gathering economy was replaced by agriculture and cattle-raising, men took advantage of women again, always assigning them the hardest jobs, such as moving rocks and blocks of stone, taming wild horses, and cutting furrows on the ground with a plough, while they, those lazy pants, stayed home painting pottery and weaving. That is revolting.

When the great empires of antiquity dissolved, yielding their places to a bedlam of warring fiefdoms, feudal lords quickly formed their private armies, exclusively made up of women, while men took refuge in castles and remained there enjoying the good life, delighting in the reading of the poems that warrior women wrote, in between battles, to praise their manly charms.

When someone had the extravagant idea of spreading Christianity throughout the world, which required sending missionaries to all corners of the Earth, where they ran the risk of being impaled by heathens, stabbed by highway robbers, or butchered by an audience bored with their preaching, the heavy burden of that mission was laid upon women, while men Machiavellianly stayed home and made novenas before their family altars.

The poor women were victims of the same kind of exploitation on the occasion of the Crusades, where, clad in heavy armors, they crossed deserts to be run through by the swords of the moors (female moors, of course, since the partisans of Mohammed were no less sexists than we). And what about the great voyages of discovery!? Seeking gold and diamonds to adorn idle males, brave female seafarers crossed the seven seas and fought against ferocious indigenous male warriors whose only advances towards them were, alas, of a military nature.

Finally, when the modern state instituted military conscription for the first time in history, government armies were made up of women, and beheading at the guillotine was the punishment for those who insisted on resisting or dodging the draft. All of that, of course, so that men could stay home reading The Princesse de Clèves.

In short, for millennia women have been dying in the battle field, moving blocks of stone, erecting buildings, fighting wild beasts, crossing deserts, seas, and jungle, making all sorts of sacrifice for us, idle males, to whom no challenge remains other than that of getting their hands dirty in soiled diapers.

In exchange for the sacrifice of their lives, women, our heroic defenders, have not demanded from us anything except the right to raise their voices at home, make a few cigarette burn marks on tablecloths, and, occasionally, leave a pair of socks in the TV room for us to pick up.

Translated from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. Translation from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

https://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/credentialed-to-destroy.jpg6371091Inter-Americanhttps://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lg1.pngInter-American2017-03-13 14:09:362017-03-13 14:10:06Jeff Nyquist and Robin Eubanks talks about education and the new administration's policy.

How Do Cultural Shifts Happen? A lecture originally delivered online in Portuguese as an introduction for Mr. Olavo de Carvalho’s Brazilian Philosophy Seminar.

Student: In an interview you gave to Atlântico magazine, you said that, instead of dividing the political spectrum into right-wing and left-wing, we should try to classify political movements as revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, because this latter pair of concepts enables us to see, for example, that some political positions and movements usually regarded as right-wing are actually revolutionary and thus belong together with left-wing movements—something which escapes our view when we use the usual definitions of left and right. Regarding this problem you have been addressing so far, have you developed another key to understanding the problem of progress, something like your concepts of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary?

Olavo: No, I have not. What I am doing is merely splitting apart a pair of concepts and saying that they do not form a pair of opposites in reality. More accurately, only at the level of vocabulary—only semantically speaking―, backwardness is the opposite of progress. In historical reality, there is no such thing as a phenomenon of backwardness which is the contrary of progress. Even if in our minds we conceive progress as a forward movement and backwardness as backward movement, the fact is we know that in reality time never moves backwards and that it is impossible for it to do so. Now, let us examine the expressions “advanced societies” and “backward societies” in light of this. It is obvious that the current conditions of any society can get worse, but they cannot literally go back to a prior state because the present conditions of a society include all their prior states. Some people say: “Oh no, we’re going back to the Stone Age!” But being born in the Stone Age is one thing, and having to live with Stone Age instruments after having known all the technology we have today is quite another. This is not going back to the Stone Age. This is something totally different; this is deterioration, not backwardness.

So, from this you can see that, being among the most used, the most imaginatively powerful, and the most entrenched in our culture, this simple pair of concepts (progress and backwardness) can make people not to understand a number of historical processes. That is to say, if people judge historical processes in terms of progress or backwardness, they will never be able to grasp the reality of what they are considering.

Wanting to become intellectuals, historians, philosophers, and so on, the poor and naive students will naturally apply to and eventually enter universities. The problem is that as they gain entry into the world of high culture, they will receive a severe impact of a huge network of intellectual blinders/impediments. Of course, they will also get a lot of positive knowledge, but when we compare the whole of material knowledge they learned, the whole of the content they acquired at university, with the system of concepts that organize this knowledge, we see that the latter is always more powerful. Why? Because the contents and their organizing concepts relate to each other as form relates to matter, in the Aristotelian sense of these words, and because it is the form of a body of knowledge determines what this knowledge means.

Now, the study of philosophy has precisely the purpose of enabling you to create your own network of concepts according to the actual needs of the quest for knowledge and not according to pre-established social ends, which are rather focused on the creation, expansion, and conservation of cultural fashions. Philosophy is an instrument for the creation of conceptual structures capable of comprehending and transcending the structures of the cultural fashions that prevail at the moment. In this sense, philosophy is a powerful instrument of deculturation. So, since your task is to try to see beyond the horizon of the culture in which you are, the first thing you need to be able do this is to learn how to retrieve the lost cognitive and intellective possibilities from times past.

How do you restore these possibilities? In the first place, you must have the necessary materials at your disposal, that is, the texts and documents that tell you exactly what happened in the periods of the past you are studying. Next, you must use your imagination to try to understand—note well—not the authors of the past as they understood themselves but rather your own situation as those authors would understand it if they were alive.

You cannot study Plato, for example, from the viewpoint of the contemporary culture because you will never understand him. Why? Because, in addition to that series of important cultural mutations that took place in the twentieth century, we are now going through a gigantic transformation in our society, a transformation determined by a factor called “technology.”

The impact of technology on modern society and culture has been only gradually perceived and integrated into human consciousness, and, strictly speaking, we are not yet living in a technological civilization, because technology does not decide and determine all social processes, although it determines a great and important number of them. But there are still a lot of things that are based on processes which have nothing to do with technology. For example, consider the facts that in our society there is a large number of religious people and that these people live, partially at least, within a cultural environment upon which technology has little or no influence at all because it simply has nothing to do with religion.

However, it is one thing to live in an environment where people believe in the existence of a God who has created the world and who is going to drive the process of history until it reaches a certain goal—the end of the world and the passage of all things into eternity. Now, it is quite another to live in a culture where everything is a matter of technology. And the fact is that as the impact of technology on society gets stronger, our culture tends to consider all matters in the light of technology.

The first and most immediate consequence of this is that everything that lies beyond the reach of technological action ends up falling beyond the reach of people’s imagination as well. (When I say “immediate,” however, I do not mean that this effect occurs without any delay, since several decades, at least, may be necessary for it to take place.) Because if technology becomes the main lens through which we view reality, then, sooner or later we will end up only thinking about those things which fall within the grasp of technology or which will supposedly fall within the grasp of technology in the future. This means that, in a sense, the realm of human action (in its material sense) becomes the ultimate horizon of reality and that nothing exists beyond it.

It is evident that the territory which falls within the grasp of man’s technological agency is vast. For instance, we may expect that someday all currently existing diseases will be cured by technological means. This has not happened yet, but we may fairly expect it will, and it is a fact that people have hopes that it will indeed happen. When people contract a disease for which there is no cure yet, what do they usually do? They sit tight and hope that, within two, three, four, five, ten, or twenty years, a cure for their disease will be found. For example, I think that all the HIV positive people in the world entertain this kind of hope. So, as I was saying, there is indeed a realm of existence which can be affected by man’s technological action and this realm is very large. However, when technology is understood as the key to existence, then, quite naturally, all that lies beyond the theoretical possibility of technological action ceases to attract people’s interest. The world, seen from this viewpoint, becomes a sort of laboratory for us to conduct our experiments (which, of course, may go right or wrong), and everything that cannot be tested through experimentation ceases to be of any interest for us.

As a consequence, all those dimensions of existence upon which technology cannot act in any way are viewed as non-existing or irrelevant—an example of this is the phenomenon of death. Nowadays people cannot seriously think about death, only about how to postpone it, which is actually thinking about how to extend human life, or how to prolong human existence. Prolonging human existence is indeed a technological possibility, and more than that, it is a possibility that technology has been able to realize so far. But what about death itself? The fact is that sooner or later, we are all going to die, that death is part of the structure of reality, and that no life-prolonging technology can possibly change this structure. And because the phenomenon of death cannot be affected by technology, because the reality of death lies beyond the reach of technological action, the concept of death is not integrated into our society and we live in a culture where death has no place. For centuries death was one of the most predominant themes in culture, but now, suddenly, the topic of death is gone. People do not talk about it anymore; they only talk about health, about extending life, about eliminating pain, and so on.

When you set out on a quest for high culture in a cultural situation like that, you start your intellectual journey with a huge blind spot in your field of vision, because an entire dimension of reality is invisible for you, as if it has never existed.

Now, the study of high culture and philosophy can help you recover the vision of those lost dimensions of reality, that is, it can help you become capable of imagining that which is not usually imaginable in your own culture. The problem is that acquiring high culture is often identified with acquiring the credentials necessary to obtain government authorization to enter the teaching or the researching profession. This poses a problem for all those who seek to acquire high culture. For it is one thing to want to acquire high culture in order to be able to understand reality, and specially the reality of history, of civilization, of human existence throughout the ages. It is quite another thing to want to acquire high culture in order to be able to practice this or that profession. In fact, these two uses of high culture are not just different, but opposed to each other, because if have to adapt yourself to the present culture to the most, so that you may be able to represent it professionally.

This is why I consider the academic institution to be the worst enemy of higher studies nowadays and why I have remained on the fringes of academia all my life. I have always feared it because I knew it did not strengthen people’s consciousness to enable them to understand reality, but rather molded their minds to enable them to perform certain social roles. Besides, I have also noticed that the social role of the academic and the scientific profession can be so hostile to a true understanding of reality that even the best minds, to the extent they strive to adapt and be successful in those professions, have to maim themselves intellectually so as not to say things that would be incomprehensible or shocking in their professional environments. Of course, there are exceptions to this. There are people who are able to have an academic career and still remain in touch with reality, but they are very scarce.

End of the second part.

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. This lecture was delivered online in December 2008. Translation from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota and proofreading by Benjamin Mann.

https://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Philosophy-Seminar.jpg4551254Inter-Americanhttps://theinteramerican.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/lg1.pngInter-American2016-08-29 15:26:032018-08-30 01:53:30Introduction to the Philosophy Seminar - Part 2